"My Testimony"
Preached on 4/29/01
at First Presbyterian Church, Dothan, Alabama

SCRIPTURE: Ephesians 2:1-10
TEXTS: "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins." (Ephesians 2:1 NKJV)
"When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through His grace…." (Galatians 1:15 NKJV)

He was big and tough. He looked like a gangster. He was, a converted gangster. He spoke at our Church when I was in Junior High School. He told how the mob had tried to rub him out. He was in the hospital, his body riddled with bullets. He wasn’t expected to live. But God was merciful. He told how Christ came into his life and changed him. I was impressed. He was a trophy of God’s grace. I am glad I had the opportunity to hear his testimony. However, I am also very glad that my testimony is different. I am thankful that God spared me the misery that the converted gangster went through before his conversion. Although my testimony is not as dramatic, the gangster and I were both saved by the same grace of God in Jesus Christ. Over the years I have heard many testimonies. Some renown Christians were previously miserable addicts, some were in prison, some lived grossly immoral lives. We rejoice in the power of the Gospel to change such lives. However, we also rejoice if our testimony is not as exciting because God drew us to Himself before we had to experience so much suffering.

Look at the Apostle Paul, alias Saul. When he described his conversion on the Damascus road, he described the timing of his turn-around with four words: "WHEN it pleased GOD!" DOWN to the ground went the surprised rebel, and God then and there accomplished what God had planned to do from before the foundation of the world. There was no begging, no singing of "Just As I Am" an extra two or three stanzas. The wicked persecutor of Christians was converted by grace "WHEN it pleased GOD!"

The Apostle Paul teaches that his conversion was God’s work of grace when he says in our text from Galatians, "When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me…." (Galatians 1:15-16a) Notice his words carefully. Paul was explaining how he was saved. He did not say, "When I decided to follow Jesus;" but he says, "when it pleased God…to reveal His Son in me." Paul testifies that his physical birth (being "separated from his mother’s womb") was by God’s grace as was his being born again spiritually the same way by God’s grace (He "called me through His grace.") When did his birth take place? "WHEN it pleased God." When did his conversion take place? "WHEN it pleased God."

Paul’s conversion was like a divine arrest. He was apprehended. Acts 9:3ff relates his conversion on the Damascus Road. "3As he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. 4Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" 5And he said, "Who are You, Lord?" Then the Lord said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads." 6So he, trembling and astonished, said, "Lord, what do You want me to do?" Then the Lord said to him, "Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."

He was told. God told him through a man named Ananias whom the Lord sent to Paul. Ananias explained what had happened to Paul on the Damascus Road. He said to the new convert, in Acts 22:14, "14'The God of our fathers has chosen you that you should know His will, and see the Just One, (that’s JESUS) and hear the voice of His mouth." (Acts 22:14) My testimony is not as dramatic as Paul’s, but it was also by God’s grace. Paul’s testimony glorified GOD, not himself. As I share my testimony with you this morning, I want to emphasize that I am talking about what GOD has done for me rather than about me.

I. FIRST, GOD GAVE ME LIFE.

Paul said, "When it pleased God who separated me from my mother’s womb," thus comparing his conversion to his birth. In due season, centuries later, "WHEN it pleased GOD," He brought me into this world. He gave me life. I was born in Sioux City, Iowa, at a very early age. However, my testimony begins thousands of years earlier, before Genesis 1:1. That’s when the Lord ELECTED me according to his own good pleasure before he created the world. The Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:4-6, "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 6to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved." (that is, in JESUS, the Beloved Son of God).

God gave me life. I didn’t buy it. I didn’t work for it. I wasn’t even asked if I wanted to be born. When I WAS born, I CRIED about it! In those days they believed the way to deliver a baby was to spank it as soon as it was born. That started me off with a mean disposition. When I didn’t get what I wanted, I cried some more. That’s called being a baby. We all started that way. We even start out our Christian life as baby Christians, but God intends for us to grow up.

In infancy I was baptized by a Bible-believing minister, named Earl Hune. He was a Gospel-preaching pastor who carried his Bible with him, believed it and preached it. Under his ministry, my dad was saved. My dad, as a teenager, responded to the invitation at the Church one Sunday Evening and committed his life to Christ. Thus I was born into a home in which my parents claimed me for God and claimed the covenant promises of God for ME as well as for themselves. What a blessing that was for me. I didn’t buy it, didn’t earn it. It was all of grace.

In my baptism God marked me as His own with the Name of the Triune God. I was set apart to be the Lord’s. Just as the lambs of the fold also belong to the Shepherd, so did I belong to the covenant family of God. I grew up to learn how the Lord Jesus had purchased me with His precious blood shed on the cross for my sins. That brings me to my second point.

II. SECOND, GOD GAVE ME ETERNAL LIFE

My testimony is based on Ephesians 2:1 which says: "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins." Then verses 3 to 5 expand on this, and I especially like the way the New English Bible translates them. "In our natural condition we, like the rest, lay under the dreadful judgment of God. But God, rich in mercy, for the great love he bore us, brought us to life with Christ even when we were dead in our sins; it is by his grace you are saved." These are the texts of my testimony. I am saying that I was dead and needed to be resurrected.

I did not live as shockingly gross a life as some whose testimonies are more exciting, but my sinful condition will be just as revolting in the Judgment. I am glad my Divine Defense Attorney, the Lord Jesus Christ, will be at my side in the Judgment. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ and HIS righteousness. Although my conversion doesn’t sound as dramatic as some, I was dead spiritually, and the reason I didn’t do more wicked things was that to do such things would have interfered with what I wanted. As Calvin says, "One lust restrains another." If I had STOLEN everything I COVETED, if I had KILLED everybody I hated; it would have interfered with some of my freedom living in jail! Even a sinner doesn’t want to go to jail. So as the Word of God makes clear, I was living under the judgment of God, spiritually dead, selfish to the core, and I needed the Lord Jesus to resurrect me. The Bible calls it SALVATION, ETERNAL LIFE, and REGENERATION or being born again.

God gave me this spiritual birth on a night when Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., from Bob Jones University, held a tent-meeting in Sioux City, Iowa. That was before Bob Jones, III, so they just called him Bob Jones, JR. I was in Junior High School. I went to the meeting with my dad. The tent was spread on a large vacant lot with saw dust down the aisles. I still remember the tall weeds around the tent. It was a hot summer night, and the sermon was hotter. I’ll never forget Bob Jones, Jr., dressed immaculately in his ice cream suit under a string of lights. He mopped his brow from time to time as he preached with great fervor and eloquence on the red-hot subject of hell. His whole sermon was on hell. I remember his ringing oratory—complete with southern accent. I remember his describing a person falling and falling and falling through hell for all eternity, and the darkness of hell—no light forever, and the heat and torment of hell for ever and ever. I was smart enough even in Junior High to know I did not want to take any chances on going there! Some people resent preaching on hell, but I appreciate it. I needed it to show me my need for the Savior.

I did not walk the saw-dust trail at the invitation. I was too shy. I was a type C- Christian. "Chicken-Christian." But God is merciful. He drew me to Himself by grace that night in the privacy of my own room. I knelt by my bed. I committed my life to the Lord Jesus Christ. When I rose from my knees, I went to a calendar on the wall and circled the date. Subsequently, I lost the calendar but not my salvation. I don’t know what that date was. I don’t know my spiritual birthday, but just as I know I was born physically, I know I am trusting in Christ spiritually. Both are the results of God’s grace.

III. THIRD, GOD BROUGHT ME OUT OF DARKNESS INTO HIS KINGDOM OF LIGHT.

It is thrilling to see a drunken, abusive father come stumbling down the aisle and accept Christ and have his life unshackled. But though our conversion may be less spectacular, it is no less necessary. Though not as rousing, it is no less real. Though we may not have had as exciting an experience, we trust in just as exciting a Savior.

Most people to whom I have the privilege of preaching have not been drug addicts, drunks, involved with Satanism, or brawlers who went out looking for fights in bars, but I have had church members who had been involved in those things. One of the most effective students in my evangelism class in Kansas was a Lesbian before her conversion. She had lived with a woman and broke up after she was confronted with the truth of hell. When I knew her in our Church in Kansas, she was happily married—to a man, of course—but she sure got people’s attention when she gave her testimony!

But most of you, thank God, lived a decent life even before your conversion. At least you were respectable in the eyes of the world. You had the benefit of a good home and good teachers. You may be a third or fourth generation Christian. Some of you cannot remember a time you did not believe in Jesus and love Him. God was gracious to you, you didn’t have to be a miserable prodigal first. Maybe you THINK therefore that you don’t have a testimony about how Christ changed your life. Maybe you can’t tell people, I’ve been there, and I can tell you from experience that life in Christ is far better!

I think God may use my testimony to speak to the ordinary person who has been saved but whose conversion was much less dramatic than most testimonies we hear. I was like all of Adam’s descendants, dead in sins and trespasses, and more in need of God’s salvation than I was able to realize. This is what I aim to relate to you now in a surprising format before I close.

Preachers are known for favoring "three points and a poem," but today I have three points and a rap song. Some of you have seen it on the internet on my web site, but you have never HEARD it. Now your new preacher has already warned you NOT to expect him to do it THIS way! I wouldn't do it this way were it not that my interim is nearly finished. I figured, what can you do now? I’ve nearly finished my job. I may as well go out with a bang! I might not have done it anyway had there not been so many people requesting it after they saw it on my web site. Young and old, children, parents, and people my age, who should be old enough to know better, have been begging me to do it with the music. Some of you may say, "The three points would have been quite sufficient," but I want to give my testimony in a way that will hold your attention, a way that won’t be dull. It’s RAP. Not a FAST RAP, because it is hard to understand what people say in fast rap, but I guess we could call it "SLOW RAP," if there is such a thing. If not, there will be this morning.

May I also say that I don't LIKE rap. I played oboe in the Sioux City, Symphony for seven years. I like classical music. I prefer opera, and we will have an opera singer here on May 20th. But today I have chosen this unusual format not only because of its uniqueness, but because it is about the One who TOOK the RAP for me. I call it—

My Testimony

A Rap about the One who Took Mine



Then I recited it with the music. You still can't hear the music here, but you could order a cassette with the music on it. I have not repeated the rap here, because it is already written out for you above on this page. For a copy of the cassette write First Presbyterian Church, 3012 W. Main Street, Dothan, AL 36305, and ask for the cassette from April 29, 2001, by Pastor Bob Baxter. Members of First Presbyterian Church can pick up a copy for $1.00. Anyone who needs to have it mailed should provide a contribution of about $5.00 for our secretaries and postage.